China Attack Gives Xi Impetus to Tighten Grip on Security

Xi Jinping, China's president, attends the opening of the second session of the 12th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in Beijing on March 3, 2014. Photographer: Feng Li/Getty Images

March 4 (Bloomberg) -- China’s Communist leader Xi Jinping,
already emerging more powerful than his predecessor, has fresh
impetus to tighten his hold on domestic security after an outcry
over a knife attack on civilians three days ago.

The Weibo microblogging service lit up with outrage in the
wake of the stabbing deaths of 29 people, many of them migrant
workers, at a train station in the southern city of Kunming -- a
shock officials blamed on members of the ethnic Uighur
separatist movement. One such posting, said: “It isn’t possible
to negotiate with you or make any concessions,” from “Drowning
Fish.”

Since coming to power Xi has concentrated control of the
military and the domestic security apparatus, heading a new
security council and a committee on the restive western province
of Xinjiang, home to the bulk of the Muslim Uighur minority. He
ordered a clampdown on “terrorist activities” after the
attack.

“This will strengthen Xi Jinping’s hand,” said Joseph
Cheng, a political science professor at the City University of
Hong Kong. “This kind of feeling will be exploited by the
authorities to engage in a crackdown.”

Political violence has risen in China even under Xi. The
attack, just days before the start of the annual National
People’s Congress, underscored the government’s inability to
defuse tensions with ethnic minorities chafing against Chinese
rule, offering authorities the chance to step up controls on
public expressions of support in the name of protecting
civilians.

‘Most Powerful’

The killings are “a blow to the Chinese security system,”
said Zheng Yongnian, director of the East Asian Institute at the
National University of Singapore. “At the central level and the
local level they are trying to set up a good system to keep
society safe but this means the system doesn’t work. So they
have to rethink.”

Before he replaced Hu Jintao as president a year ago, Xi
was named chairman of the Central Military Commission. Last week
he headed a meeting of a new committee focused on cyber
security.

“Xi is on track to becoming the most powerful man since
Deng Xiaoping,” who led China after the death of Mao Zedong in
1976, Suh Jin Young, a professor of Chinese politics at Seoul’s
Korea University, said by phone. “China’s war against terrorism
will help Xi increase his political power. He’s already
exercising more authority than ever thanks to a growing
consensus that a powerful man is needed on top of a collective
leadership.”

Spreading Violence

At this week’s annual meeting of the legislature, the
government will release figures for internal security and
defense spending for this year. Last year it forecast military
spending would rise 10.7 percent to 740.6 billion yuan ($120
billion) and outlays on public security would increase 8.7
percent to 769 billion yuan.

“The killings would generate greater pressure on Xi and
his administration to act more decisively,” said Steve Tsang,
director of the China Policy Institute at the University of
Nottingham in England. “Xi was on track to take a tough line
against the ‘separatists or restless minorities’ anyway and the
Kunming incident will only reinforce this trend,” he said.

Chinese police shot and killed four suspects and captured
three, the official Xinhua News Agency reported yesterday. A
wounded woman was detained at the scene on March 1, it said.

Attack Evidence

Confirmation of a Uighur role would further indicate ethnic
violence is spreading beyond Xinjiang. Authorities also blamed
Uighurs for an attack in October when a sports-utility vehicle
crashed into a crowd near Beijing’s Tiananmen square, killing
two tourists and the three people in the vehicle.

China faces a “grim” situation in the struggle against
terrorism, Public Security Minister Guo Shengkun said after the
Tiananmen Square crash.

Authorities found evidence of flags from the East Turkestan
Islamic Movement at the Kunming scene, Foreign Ministry
spokesman Qin Gang said yesterday. “No matter who they are or
what group they belong to, no matter where or what time the
incident took place, the Chinese government will severely crack
down on them in accordance with the law,” Qin said.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the attack
appeared to be an act of terrorism targeting random members of
the public. “We acknowledge that China has characterized the
incident as a terror act,” she told reporters yesterday at a
briefing.

‘State Enemies’

The Munich-based World Uyghur Congress said it condemned
the Kunming violence and called on the Chinese government to
ensure the minority group was not subject to indiscriminate
reprisals.

“It is important the Chinese government deal with the
incident rationally and not set about demonizing the Uighur
people as state enemies,” Rebiya Kadeer, president of the
group, said in a statement yesterday. “It is absolutely vital
the Chinese government deal with the longstanding and
deteriorating human rights issues facing Uighurs if tensions are
to be reduced.”

The East Turkestan Islamic Movement was founded by a Uighur
separatist and listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S.
State Department in 2002. China Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua
Chunying said last year the group was the country’s most direct
security threat.

“In the past, people really have wondered if some of these
charges were trumped up in order to support repression and
increased security and militarization of the region,” said Dru
Gladney, a professor of anthropology at Pomona College in
Claremont, California. “But now it’s a national problem and
it’s not just in Xinjiang.”

Han Chinese

Tensions between Han Chinese, who comprise more than 90
percent of the national population, and the Uighurs, who account
for about 40 percent of the population of Xinjiang, have led to
an increase in violence in the northwest. In February, police
killed eight people who attacked a convoy of patrol cars in
Xinjiang, while weeks earlier six rioters who were planting
explosives were shot and killed. Another 50 people died in
separatist-related attacks in the region between June of last
year and December.

Authorities detained Ilham Tohti, a Uighur academic, on
suspicion of committing crimes and violating laws, Hong Lei, a
foreign ministry spokesman, said last month. His lawyer, Li
Fangping, said Tohti was arrested on charges of “splitting the
country.”

“The regime has tragically mangled relations with the main
minorities,” Andrew Nathan, a professor of political science at
Columbia University in New York, said by e-mail. “They have
tried to ‘modernize’ the Tibetans and Uighurs, which those
populations perceive as disrespectful and not in their own
interests.”

Tibet Protests

Protests against Chinese rule in Tibet have also flared.
There have been 127 self-immolations by Tibetans since Feb. 27,
2009, the International Campaign for Tibet said on its website.
China last month warned that relations with the U.S. could
suffer after President Barack Obama hosted a White House meeting
with the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader who
Chinese authorities accuse of engaging in separatist activities.

The fallout from Kunming may mean Xi extends a crackdown on
other forms of dissent. In January, legal scholar Xu Zhiyong was
sentenced to four years in jail on charges of gathering a crowd
to disturb public order, the most prominent activist jailed
since Nobel Peace prize winner Liu Xiaobo in 2009. At least 50
activists were arrested between February and October, according
to New York-based Human Rights Watch.

“The party’s and the public security’s control obviously
is in decline because there’s more freedom to travel and so
on,” City University’s Cheng said. “Now it’s much more
difficult.”